let it all go

I’ve never been one to hold a grudge (for too long). In part because my memory tends to be a bit shaky and I’m liable to forget what the heck you did six months from now. Partly because I like to think happy thoughts, floating along in a semi-comatose dream-like state. Reminiscing on the past, the beautiful rainbow-colored memories of happier times. Or fantasizing about the future and what joyous things lay in store around the next bend. Somewhere in there I try to come back down to earth just long enough to function and carry out my mundane tasks with a semblance of normalcy.

Oh yes, grudges were what I was talking about. Like I said, I don’t too much care for them. They get in the way of me being my idealistic happy-go-lucky self. Cause there is so much work in schlepping that grudge around from day to day. Not only do you have to remember the wrongs done, but you have to paint a sour face and disposition over an otherwise rosy demeanor, you have to rehash the sins of said friends and family against whom you're holding that grudge to anyone who will listen and declare how wrong the person was for doin’ you dirt.

You have to actively forget all the good times that went down. The countless occasions ya’ll laughed till you cried, waited 5 minutes and laughed again about the same silliness. All the times ya’ll rode bikes around the neighborhood and explored new cul-de-sacs, the houses that you picked out as yours when you got grown enough to be buy it for yourself. You have to think the worst of someone, when thinking the best may come so naturally. You have to believe that people are out to get you instead of understanding that everyone has a slip in judgment every now and again.

I can readily call to mind the times and ways I felt I’ve been wronged, had an “oh no that be-yotch didn’t!” moment and thought to myself why even bother, I mean really why even have friends if they will disappoint you and destroy the faith that you had in the goodness of them. If they will wash away years of trust, as if they have no idea about your character such that they would think the worst of you or do the suckiest stuff to you. Why get close to people if they won’t allow you to do you in a way that doesn’t harm them, instead silently judging you or doing things that "force" you to judge them?

Why indeed?

Cause sometimes your friends can be worse than your enemies, straight hatin’ ass, not worth a damn mofos, making you just want to cut a sucker from ear to ear. They know all your secrets and all your business. So when your friends f’ you over, it is especially hurtful. But like I said, I don’t hold a grudge. I let it marinate for a day or two but I get over it cause I know I’ve done some not so nice things in my life and I would hope that others would forgive my transgressions as well. Of course I don’t forget either, keeping things stored in my memory bank and be quick to send a "bitch please" with a side of "hell naw" your way the next time you step outta line.

But if you don’t let it go, at least releasing that deathly chokehold you have on that grudge, then you’ll soon find yourself with no friends since everyone will make a mistake at some point in time. You will be one lonely bastard with no one who loves you and a grudge the size of the Grand Canyon preventing you from loving others. Life would suck for you because you’d have no one there to tell you that dress is not a good look for your body type. No one to travel across the country or across the world with, just you, yourself and you in a five star hotel cause you couldn’t pay a friend to travel with you since you'd have none. No one to escape the plantation with when the time came for freedom cause no one woulda clued you in to the revolution.

We reach out to others in friendship, in love, as an attempt to be connected to some thing in this world other than ourselves. –mint julep

We love as soon as we learn to distinguish a separate you and me. Love is our attempt to assuage the terror and isolation of that separateness. –Judith Viorst

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. –1 Corinthians 13: 4-7

Show some love today and let go of that grudge!